 Yes it is snowing outside, and right now when you are supposed to be learning in school, you are probably asking yourself, Are we going home early? Will practice be canceled? Answers that I do not have for you at the moment! As of now the only change to our schedule is Saturday, January 26 when there will be no practice, because the pool is closed. The final wrap for the football season has arrived 2 weeks early. All I can say is that the team should go back to Mexico  and continue their vacation  for 6 more months. The fact that they were so happy that Sunday when they won the Division has always bothered me. I truly believe that they started reading their own press clippings and figured that if they just showed up for the games that the other team would just hand it to them. Hey guys remember that lesson, when you are on top their is always someone who wants to knock you off, so you better show up with your best. WHEN DOES BASEBALL START? VICTOR MEET WRAP UP: Thank you to all the parents who helped time during the meet. We know this was the first time we attended this meet, and some of our reasons were that it allowed our kids a chance to swim in the middle of the day as oppose to getting up at 5:00 and driving for 45 minutes to the January Open. This meet also allowed the 8 and unders to swim with the 9&10 so they are ready next year. I have always liked meets at South Run because with the pool set up it is easy to watch the swimmers and I don't miss as much. We have been invited back for a Meet on March 8-9 for our NON JO SWIMMERS, so give us some feed back!The swimmers did a great job with their events and while I would love to go down the list I would probably miss someone, which I would hate to do. We had swimmers from our group achieve 30 JO cuts. Our group also achieved 174 personal best times in their events. We also had swimmers who stepped out of their comfort zone and try some 20 new events. Including a few 200 free, 2000IM, 200 fly, 200 back, and 200 breast. Way to go   for this week. High Performance group is ALEX HUNTER, who has had a great week of practice and is doing very well in the wed 5:30 group. She also swam last weekend and got another JO cut  . AGE GROUP 2 is Kyle Stocken who has improved a great deal in practice and if we can get him to slow down a little more in practice, he will see a lot more improvement in the strokes. The speed will be their when you need it. TOPIC FOR WEEK: "RACE YOUR OWN SWIM"  Last weekend I was talking to someone within our group about a distance swim when we came to that much used phrase "swim your own race." After thinking about it I came to the conclusion that it needed some clarification. Too often, when swimmers hear this advice from us your coaches you are reminded of some basic concepts, don't let someone take you out too fast, don't let someone else set the pace, stick to your "game plan", and more, but you miss one key word, RACE. Sometimes you have to throw away your game plan. Sometimes you have to change what your doing in the middle of a race. A race is always that a RACE. Sometimes, you just have to RACE. Other goals are worthwhile. Goals for time, technique, pace and more add to the fun, keep you in the swim, and help you to reach future goals. BUT KEEP IN MIND, EVERY RACE IS A RACE! Sometimes you need to  blow and go earlier than you planned. Sometimes you need to hold a faster pace than you planned. Sometimes you have to go  faster than you planned, or thought you could, just because the competition is swimming faster!The object of the game in any race is to win!  If you can't win (though you often can't be sure of that until someone else finishes before you do), you should be trying for second place. If you get to a point where you can't grab second, third would be great. If third is unreachable, now fourth becomes extremely important. The idea is to RACE to beat everyone. And that's part of the fun! In case you get out of school early here is your history lesson. Today in 1991 Operation Desert Storm started in the evening. That would be the first Iraq war. Also in 1971 in Super Bowl V the Baltimore Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys 16-13. Yes, the Colts used to be in Baltimore before running away in a snow storm in the middle of the night.HAVE A GOOD WEEK AND ENJOY THE SNOW! MIKE |
Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape in the new year.
